The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Website analytics is generally used for measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of website usage data as well as website visitor behaviors for purposes of understanding and optimizing website usage. Website analytics can measure and analyze performance of a website in commercial as well as noncommercial contexts. In a commercial context, the website owner may want to know which pages of the website encourage people to make a purchase. The data collected during performance measurements of the website can be used to improve website effectiveness.
In website analytics, various approaches can be taken to collect and process data related to website performance. According to one approach, log files in which the web server records its transactions can be read and analyzed. In another approach, pages of the website can be tagged with a snippet of computer code (e.g., JavaScript or an image) to notify a third-party server when the pages are rendered by the web browser. The snippet can also pass certain information about the webpage and the visitor to the third-party server. This information can then be processed and statistics generated. The statistics can then be used to provide reports, which can include website performance information, number of page views, time of the day, and click data (e.g., location on the page, object clicked on, and other custom metrics). In order to uniquely identify a user during multiple visits, the user can be assigned a cookie.
Typical website analytics provider requires a customer to log into its website to view the website analytics interface. This approach provides the customer with a third person perspective, where the third party website is displaying metrics about the original client's site. This third person perspective can make it difficult to understand specific data or usage patterns because they are not presented in the context of the website.